How Close Student Teachers' Educational Philosophies and Their Scientific Thinking Processes in Science Education

Actualité de la Recherche en Education et en Formation, Strasbourg 2007

1

How Close Student Teachers’ Educational Philosophies

and Their Scientific Thinking Processes in Science

Education

Kemal Yurumezoglu*, Ayse Oguz**

* Secondary Science and Mathematic Education Department

The Mugla University College of Education

48000 Kotekli-Mugla TURKEY

[email protected]

** Elementary Education Department

The Mugla University College of Education

48000 Kotekli-Mugla TURKEY

[email protected]

ABSTRACT. For being guidance, science teachers should be framed by strong content

knowledge to construct scientific thinking process as a scaffold. The aim of this research was

to look at student teachers’ scientific thinking processes. Then, the results compared with

their educational philosophy. During the study, two different instruments were used. For

measuring each student’s scientific thinking processes, the authors developed two scenarios.

In addition, educational philosophy self-assessment test was conducted to the thirty-two

junior student teachers. In this study, the combinations of qualitative and quantitative

methods were used. All data were in the form of paper and pencil. Iterative process of open

coding was used to analyze the scenarios. The educational philosophy self-assessment test

was ported into a Microsoft Office Excel program 2003 to calculate frequency and

percentage. The results showed that there was a big gap between what students thought and

what they did. Even though they supported constructivism in education, they tended to make

interpretations in terms of their common sense. The authors stated that the gap between

scientific thinking and common sense and habitude interpretations could only be closed by

using scientific thinking processes as a scaffold.

KEY-WORS : educational philosophy, scientific thinking, psychological orientations, scaffolding

2 Actualité de la Recherche en Education et en Formation, Strasbourg 2007

1. Introduction

What the future holds in store for individual human beings, the nation, and the

world depends largely on the wisdom with which human use science and

technology. And that, in turn, depends on the character, distribution, and

effectiveness of the education that people receive.

Many science education programs (AAAS, 1989; Republic of Turkey Ministry

of National Education, 2002) support the idea that active, hands-on (la main a la

pate), and student-centered inquiry should be at the core of a good science

education. A major goal is to improve science education and ultimately achieve

higher levels of scientific literacy for all students. The programs intend to provide

support for integrity of science in science programs by presenting and discussing

criteria for improvement of science education.

More than ever before, educators agree that science education should be based

on asking questions, conducting investigations, collecting data, and looking for

answers (e.g. Schneider, Krajcik, Marx, & Soloway, 2002; Singer, Marx, & Krajcik,

2000). In addition, instead of memorizing the scientific facts, learners should be

encouraged to use the scientific thinking process. The best way to learn science is to

do science. Strategies for do science should focus on selecting projects of interest to

the learners and having them apply concepts and skills from other content areas.

The deep connection between levels of content knowledge and the scientific

thinking process has important implications for science education. The studies on

content knowledge factor indicated that school science instruction needs to pay

attention to the interaction of evolving content knowledge and evolving scientific

thinking process. Although the research base linking the quality of content

knowledge and the quality of process appears stronger in science cognition, this

connection is generally poorly reflected in science instruction.

There are now a number of classroom-based experiments that aim to apply these

ideas to children’s science instruction. For example, Rosebery, Warren and Conant

(1992) have developed an approach to science instruction that emphasis

collaboration. The researchers` goal was that children actually do science and they

engaged in the full scope of scientific thinking process with a remarkable degree of

regulation on the part of children themselves. They generated their own questions,

planned their research, collected and interpreted data, and developed and refined

their theories. The researchers reported growth in both scientific thinking process

and science content knowledge.

Educational Philosophy & Scientific Thinking Process in Science Education

3

As one can understand from the above recommendations science teaching is a

complex activity. Therefore, teachers of science at all grade levels should always

monitor and evaluate their students as a guide. This can be expressed by

sociocultural theory. Sensitive instruction at the novice’s cutting edge of

understanding, in Vygotsky`s (1978) “zone of proximal development” (p.84)

encourages participation at a comfortable yet challenging level and provides a

bridge for generalizing skills and approaches from familiar to novel situations.

Teaching in the ZPD provides a “scaffold” to support the child in learning. As

learners become more component, the teacher gradually withdraws the scaffolding

so learners can perform independently. The key is to ensure that the scaffolding

keeps learners in the ZPD.

Scientific thinking processes can be think as a scaffold in science classes because

that involves several procedural and conceptual activities such as asking questions,

hypothesizing, designing, experiments, using apparatus, observing, measuring,

predicting, recording and interpreting data, testing, evaluating evidence, performing

statistical calculations, making inferences, and formulating theories and models.

This focus ensures the development of unifying the knowledge (e.g., Spelke, 1991;

Vosniadou & Ionnides 1998). However, sometimes students fail to make

connections and reach the conclusions. Is this the reason of children’s lack of

scientific reasoning ability or teachers’ lack of being guidance to teach scientific

thinking processes?

Metz (1998) claimed that “developmentally appropriate” science curricula

significantly underestimate the potential of children’s scientific reasoning ability.

Moreover, not only Goswani (1998) but also Klahr (2000) described that both

fundamental and higher-order cognitive processes are well established by the end of

the first year of life. These cognitive processes are perception, attention, learning,

memory, knowledge representation, reasoning and problem solving. In addition,

Glaser (1981) found that while experts categorized physics problem in terms of

abstract principles, adults with little knowledge categorized physics problem at the

level of surface features. What is more, Chi (1978) compared the performance of

child domain-specific experts with adults’ novices with the abilities of the child

chess experts and adult chess novices.

Thus, the deficiencies of scientific reasoning in children should be questioned

whether it is due to their developmental shortcomings or due to their poor science

content knowledge or due to their teachers poor guidance in science classes. For

being guidance, science teachers should be framed by strong content knowledge for

constructing the scientific thinking process as a scaffold. Therefore, the aim of this

research was to look at pre-service teachers’ scientific thinking processes. Then, the

results compared with their educational philosophy. The main goal is to look at how

close junior student teachers’ philosophy and their scientific thinking processes.


2. Method

2.1. Instructional context

The study was conducted at a public university located in the Mediterranean

region of Turkey with junior student teachers enrolled in the department of Science

Education in Primary School Teaching. Students of this department had already

completed within the years the basic physics, chemistry, biology and educational

courses before the study were conducted. This investigation focused on determining

whether student teacher’ scientific thinking processes are reflected their educational

philosophy»

2.2. Participants

The participants were junior student teachers enrolled at the four year public

college. The student populations of the school were selected to the college according

to their scores on the nationwide centralized university entrance exam and their

preferences. Generally coming from middle class working families, students come

to the college from the different parts of the nation. Data were collected in spring

semester of 2007 and included thirty two junior student teachers (twenty boys,

twelve girls) from the department of Science Education in Primary School Teaching.

2.3. Instruments

During the study, two different instruments were used to compare students’

scientific thinking processes and their educational philosophies. For measuring each

student’s scientific thinking processes two scenarios were developed by the authors

(see appendix 1). In the first scenario, a case about environmental pollution was

given. In this case, the effects of acid rain were discussed from several perspectives.

The question was making inferences based on given perspectives. In the second

scenario, an experimental design example was given. The question for the student

was to design an experiment to test the soil acidity. The main goal for scenario two

was to look at student teachers’ scientific thinking ability in given problem. In

another words, the aim was to observe student teachers’ approaches to the problem.

It is whether scientific or non-scientific.

Philosophy often seems rather remote and disconnected from everyday life, but it

is not at all the case. Everyone has a philosophy of life and it is what guides one’s in

his daily actions. This thought can be transferred to educational philosophy of

teachers that might important to reflect their actions in the classrooms. Therefore,

educational philosophy self-assessment test (Cohen, 1999) was conducted to the

student teachers.


5

The assessment contain forty items with five linkert-scale degreed from strongly

agree to strongly disagree. The assessment developed to measure four educational

philosophies: (1) perennialism, (2) essentialism, (3) progressivism, and (4)

reconstructionalism/critical theory and four psychological orientations (related

theories of learning): (1) information processing, (2) behaviorism, (3)

cognitivism/constructivism, and (4) humanism (see appendix 2). All these

educational philosophies and psychological orientations have their roots from world

philosophies. These philosophies and theories were summarized in Appendix 1.

3. Data analysis and coding procedure

In this study, the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods that named

mixed design was used. All data were in the form of paper and pencil. Iterative

process of open coding was used to analyze the scenarios (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).

The educational philosophy self-assessment test was ported into a Microsoft Office

Excel program 2003. Frequency and percentage measures were done based on the

scoring table in appendix 3. The coding schemes of the qualitative data were

contracted by two researchers. Both are doctorate in college of education. To

establish the reliability, each data were analyzed depending on the coding scheme by

the researchers.

In the first scenario, three situations were given to the participants to interpret the

scenario. First, the researchers analyzed students’ interpretations based on three

criteria: (1) interpretation by habitude, (2) interpretation by common sense, and (3)

interpretation by scientifically. Then the researchers categorized the interpretations

in terms of the dominant reasoning types such as causal, sequential, experimental,

inductive, deductive, dialectic, conditional, …. and uncertain. The coding scheme

for scenario 1 and an example of coding from students’ data are presented in Table

2.

As presented in the table 2 student 30 started the interpretation for situation 2 by

saying “…according to me it’s plausible…” and continued “…I did not found this

idea logical…” The participant did not mention any scientific explanations such as

why he is thinking like that. But later on, the participant made scientific

interpretations by the end of his task. Interpretation by habitude was obvious in

student 5 data, because there were no knowledge and processes presented in the

essay.

In the second scenario, participants’ scientific reasoning processes were tested

by asking designing an experiment. The researchers analyzed students’ writing in

terms of the experimental processes that widely accepted by the scientific

community: (1) observation, (2) research question, (3) hypothesis, (4)

experimentation, (5) results, (6) interpretation, (7) conclusion, and (8) sequentially.

The coding scheme for scenario 2 and an example of coding from student’s data are

presented in Table 3.


Table 2: Coding protocol and an example for scenario 1.

Coding Protocol for scenario 1

Examples

from student

data

interpretation by

habitude

interpretation by

common sense

interpretation by

scientifically

Student 30

interpretation

…according to

me it’s plausible

that pesticides

are not useful for

farms…I did not

found this idea

logical…

(Experimental

reasoning)

…I am suspicious of

all given situations,

because the only

changes might not be

the rocks. The similar

context should be

developed in lab.

Environment and

should be

tested…then I could

only be persuaded…

(Experimental

reasoning and

inductive reasoning)

Student 5

interpretation

…whether the water

takes away the effects

of chemicals that lost

its

effects…(uncertain)

Table 3: Coding protocol and an example for scenario 2.

Coding Protocol for

scenario 1

An example from student 20 experimental processes

Observation

(pre-research)

…the soil and other possible absorbsion matters are used to

analyze the soil and the acid…

Research question …To understand the soil acidity and whether it is absorb the

water…

Hypothesis …If a neutralization reaction occurs in the soil, there might

be base matters in it and after neutralization some salt and

some water should be retained in the soil…

Experimentation …During the experiment, physical and chemical analyze

methods will be used…

Interpretation …If basic solution’s pH decreases that means neutralization

is started…

Conclusion …Even though the soil neutralized the acid that can not

generalized for every soil…

sequentially The data is sequential in terms of scientific processes.


7

4. Results

During the study, two different instruments were conducted. One was students’

educational philosophy and the other was students’ scientific thinking processes. In

Figure 1 students’ educational philosophy was represented. According to he figure,

students responses heaped up around two psychological orientates that are

cognitivism/constructivism and humanism respectively. Reconstruction/critical

theory and progressivism were students’ highest preference as educational

philosophies. Essentialism and perennialism were students least choices

respectively.

Figure 1: Students’ educational philosophies

449

403

627

647

594

567

664

651

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700

PERENNIALISM

ESSENTIALISM

PROGRESSIVISM

RECONSTRUCTION/CARITICAL

THEORY

INFORMATION PROCESSING

BEHAVIORISM

COGNI/CONSTRUCTIVISM

HUMANISM

Student teachers’ interpretations for scenario 1 analyzed based on three criteria

(habituate, common sense, and scientific) and the results summarized in Figure 2.

Although majority of student believed in science, only % 43 of student teachers’

interpretation were scientifically. According to the figure, % 45 of students tended

to interpret in terms of their common sense.

Figure 2: Student interpretations for scenario 1


43

5

45

7

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

SCIENTIFIC

HABITUDE

COMMON SENSE

NO RESPONSE

%

Students’ interpretations based on the dominant reasoning types (such as causal,

sequential, experimental, inductive, deductive, dialectic, conditional,…. and

uncertain) were showed in figure 3. More than half of the students’ responses (%60)

were had a tendency to causal reasoning.

Figure 3: Students’ reasoning type scenario 1

60

11

1

5

9

13

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

CAUSAL

DIALECTICAL

SEQUENTIAL

CONDITIONAL

INDUCTIVE/EXPERIMENTAL

UNCERTAINE

%

In figure 4, student teachers’ scientific reasoning processes that were tested by

designing an experiment represented. Majority of students (%84) were tended to

made some interpretations whereas only %19 of students were tended to made

hypothesis. Therefore, barely % 16 of participants’ scientific thinking processes

showed sequentially. In the second scenario, the researchers only expected from

students to design an experiment not apply it in the laboratory. This is why student

did not presented any results in their essays. However, even though students

gathered around constructivism only a quarter of students construct a research

question in an experimental design process.

Figure 4: Scientific thinking processes of students’ experimental design for

scenario 2


9

38

25

19

78

0

84

19

16

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

OBSERVATION

QUESTION RESEARCH

HYPOTESIS

EXPERIMENTATION

RESULTS

INTERPRETATION

CONCLUSION

SEQUENTIAL

%

5. Conclusion

Students and teachers face many more pressures today than they did in 1940s,

and yet it appears that most of the classes are still teacher- directed and dominated.

Students are still looking for right or wrong answers and not learning how to think.

It looks like we could not do much good about Deweyan wisdom that education

must pay more attention to the development of the students` minds.

In this research student teachers’ educational philosophy and their scientific

thinking processes were studied to understand how close they each other. The results

showed that there was a big gap between what students thought and what they did.

Even though they supported constructivism in education, they were tended to make

interpretations in terms of their common sense.

Majority of participants presented more than one interpretations in their essays.

Especially common sense and scientific interpretations were interrelated each other.

On the other hand, the essays with poor scientific explanation were framed around

habitude interpretations. Therefore, it might be concluded that students with

common sense are closer to scientific thinking than students with habitude thoughts.

The authors stated that the gap between scientific thinking and common sense and

habitude interpretations could only be closed by using scientific thinking processes

as a scaffold.

Information is increasing and social changes are also racing far ahead of

educational changes. There is no way that teachers can transmit either volumes of

information or that kind of social changes. What teachers can teach is how to find

the information and interpret, analyze and use it constructively in social context.

Classes framed around scientific thinking processes could enable this kind of

information because the thinking process is a broad idea that one could evaluate

information from several perspectives.


6. Reference

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (1989). Science for

All Americans. Overview Report. Washington, DC: Author.

Beane, J.A. ( 1997). Curriculum integration: Designing the core of democratic

education. New York, London: Teachers College, Columbia University.

Chi, M. (1978). Knowledge structures and memory development. In R.S. Siegler

(Ed.), Children`s Thinking: What develops? Hillsdale,NJ: Erlbaum. 73-96.

Cohen, L. M. (1999). Educational philosophies self-assessment. (On line).

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/ed416/Task4.html. (Retrieved March 28, 2007).

Goswami, U. (1998). Cognition in Children. UK: Taylor& Francis.

Klahr, D. (2000). Exploring Science. New York: Cambridge.

Krajcik, J.S., Blumenfeld, P.C., Marx, R.W., & Soloway, E. (1994). A collaborative

model for helping middle grade science teachers learn project-based instruction.

Elementary School Journal, 94, 483–497.

Metz, K. E. (1998). Scientific Inquiry Within Reach of Young Children. In B. J.

Fraser & K. G. Tobin. (Ed.), International Handbook of Science Education (pp. 81-

96).Great Britain: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

National Research Council (1996). National Science Education Standards.

Washington, DC; National Academy Press.

Ramsey, J. (1993). The effects of issue investigation and action training on

environmental behavior. Journal of Environmental Education, 24(3).31-36.

Republic of Turkey Ministry of National Education. (2002a). Ataturk’s view of

education [on line].

http://www.meb.gov.tr/stats/apk2001ing/Section_0/AtaturksViewon.htm#s0.(

Retrieved March 6 2007).

Rosebery, A.S., Waren, B. & Conant, F.R. (1992). Approaching Scientific

Discourse: Findings from Language Minority Classrooms (TERC Working Paper 1-

92). TERC (Technical Education Research Center): Cambridge, MA.

Singer, J., Marx, R.W., Krajcik, J. (2000). Constructing Extended Inquiry Projects:

Curriculum Materials for Science Education Reform. Educational Psychologist,

35(3), 165-178.

Spelke, E. (1991). Physical knowledge in infancy: Reflection on Piaget`s theory. In

S. Carey & R. Gelman (Ed), The Epigenesis of Mind: Essays on Biology and

Cognition (pp. 133-169). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Vosniadou, S., & Ionnides, C. (1998). From conceptual development to science

education: a psychological point of view. International Journal of Science

Education. 20(10), 1213-30.


11

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological

processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard


Appendix 1

Philosophy and education continuum chart

(Available online at http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/ed416/chart3.html).

Modernity <------------------------------------------------------------------------> Post Modernity

Traditional and Conservative <---------------------------------> Contemporary and Liberal

Authoritarian (convergent) <--------------------------------> (divergent) Non-Authoritarian

Gen

era

l o

r W

orl

d

Ph

ilo

sop

hie

s

Idealism:

Ideas are the only

true reality, the

only thing worth

knowing.

Focus: Mind

Realism:

Reality exists

independent of

human mind.

World of physical

objects ultimate

reality.

Focus: Body

Pragmatism:

Universe is dynamic,

evolving. Purpose of

thought is action.

Truth is relative.

Focus: Experience

Existentialism:

Reality is subjective,

within the individual.

Individual rather than

external standards.

Focus: Freedom

Ori

gin

ato

r(s)

Plato, Socrates Aristotle Pierce, Dewey Sartre, Kierkegaard

Cu

rric

ula

r

Em

ph

asis

Subject matter of

mind: literature,

history,

philosophy,

religion

Subject matter of

physical world:

science, math

Subject matter of

social experience.

Creation of new

social order

Subject matter of personal

choice

Teach

ing

Met

ho

d

Teach for handling

ideas: lecture,

discussion

Teach for mastery

of facts and basic

skills:

demonstration,

recitation

Problem solving:

Project method

Individual as entity within

social context

Ch

arac

ter

Dev

elo

pm

ent

Imitating

examples, heroes

Training in rules of

conduct

Making group

decisions in light of

consequences

Individual responsibility

for decisions and

preferences

Rel

ated

Ed

uca

tio

nal

Ph

ilo

sop

hie

s

Perennialism:

Focus: Teach ideas

that are everlasting.

Seek enduring

truths which are

constant, not

changing, through

great literature, art,

philosophy,

religion.

Essentialism:

Focus: Teach the

common core, "the

basics" of

information and

skills (cultural

heritage) needed

for citizenship.

(Curriculum can

change slowly)

Progressivism:

Focus: Ideas should

be tested by active

experimentation.

Learning rooted in

questions of learners

in interaction with

others. Experience

and student centered.

Reconstructionism/

Critical Theory

Focus: Critical pedagogy:

Analysis of world events,

controversial issues and

diversity to provide vision

for better world and social

change.


13

Key

Pro

po

nen

ts

Robert Hutchins,

Jacque Maritain,

Mortimer Adler,

Allan Bloom

William Bagley;

Arthur Bestor,

E. D. Hirsch,

Chester Finn,

Diane Ravitch,

Theodore Sizer

John Dewey,

William Kilpatrick

George Counts,

J. Habermas,

Ivan Illich,

Henry Giroux,

Paulo Freire

Rel

ated

Th

eo

ries

of

Learn

ing

(Psy

ch

olo

gic

al

Ori

enta

tio

ns)

Information

Processing

The mind makes

meaning through

symbol-processing

structures of a

fixed body of

knowledge.

Describes how

information is

received,

processed, stored,

and retrieved from

the mind.

Behaviorism

Behavior shaped by

design and

determined by

forces in

environment.

Learning occurs as

result of reinforcing

responses to

stimuli.

Social Learning

Learning by

observing and

imitating others.

Cognitivism/

Constructivism

Learner actively

constructs own

understandings of

reality through

interaction with

environment and

reflection on actions.

Student-centered

learning around

conflicts to present

knowing structures.

Humanism

Personal freedom, choice,

responsibility.

Achievement motivation

towards highest levels.

Control of own destiny.

Child centered.

Interaction with others.

Key

pro

pon

en

ts

R. M. Gagne,

E. Gagne,

Robert Sternberg,

J.R. Anderson

Ivan Pavlov,

John Watson,

B.F. Skinner,

E.L. Thorndike,

Albert Bandura

Jean Piaget,

U. Bronfenbrenner,

Jerome Bruner,

Lev Vygotsky

J.J. Rousseau,

A. Maslow,

C. Rogers,

A. Combs,

R. May

Appendix 2

Scenario 1

Trees in North America and Europe are dying at an alarming rate. Among the

many possible causes is acid rain. Studies suggest that acid rain destroys essential

nutrients in the soil and damages the trees` delicate roots. As trees weaken from lack

of food, they are unable to survive insect attacks, drought, and heavy frosts. In time,

they die from these causes. However, some forests have managed to stay healthy.

Your job is to find out how some forests manage to stay healthy. Here some

interpretations from the farmers who are living in that zone. Please read all of the

interpretations and decide which one or ones are appropriate and inappropriate.

1. Farmer: Now-a-days we regularly use pesticides to control insects. When

pesticides are applied to land, residues may run off into streams and lake, these

chemicals reduce the causes of acid rain.

2. Farmer: Some forests have managed to stay healthy, because natural

substances in surrounding rocks protect them. These substances are called “buffer”.

One of the commonly known buffers is limestone. Like other buffers, limestone can

neutralize acids. So acid rain causes little or no damage in the areas with limestone.


3. Farmer: In some regions the weather is hot, so the rain on the ground

evaporates quickly. As a result the damage of the acid rain disappears.

Do you agree with any of these farmers? Describe in detail why do you agree

with him?

If you do not agree with any one of them, then also describe why you do not

agree with them.

Scenario 2

Senay made an acidic solution by adding vinegar to 1 cup (250ml) of tap water

until the pH (acidic level) was 4.0 and poured the solution over the soil so that it

dripped through the filter into the container. Then she used litmus paper to tests the

pH of the solution in the container. The pH was lower than 4.0.

Students in Senay’s group have the following explanations. With whom would

Students in Senay’s group have the following explanations. With whom

would you agree? Give you reasons in detail.

Emir: Soil absorbs some water and acid, so there is less acid in the water that

comes out.

Cigdem: This soil neutralizes the acid.

Deniz: All soil neutralizes acid so there is less acid in the water that comes out.

They could not agree on an answer. What kind of experiment they could design

to find out who is right?

Pouring acidic solution

through the soil (pH=4)

Soi

Solution in the

container Solution in the container pH

lower than 4


15

Appendix 3

Educational Philosophies Self-Assessment Scoring Guide

Record the number you chose for each statement in the self-assessment in the

spaces given. Add the numbers for each section to obtain your score for that section.

The highest score(s) indicates your educational philosophy and psychological

orientation.

Perennialism

The acquisition of knowledge about the great ideas of western culture, including

understanding reality, truth, value, and beauty, is the aim of education. Thus,

curricula should remain constant across time and context. Cultivation of the intellect

is the highest priority of an education. Teachers should directly instruct the great

works of literature and art and other core curricula (The total scores of questions 1,

10, 23, 31, and 39 are related to this philosophy).

Essentialism

Essentialists believe that there is a core of basic knowledge and skills that needs

to be transmitted to students in a systematic, disciplined way. A practical focus,

rather than social policy, and emphasis on intellectual and moral standards should be

transmitted by the schools. It is a back-to-basics movement that emphasizes facts.

Instruction is uniform, direct, and subject-centered. Students should be taught

discipline, hard work, and respect for authority (The total scores of questions 5, 7,

12, 16, and 17 are related to this philosophy).

Progressivism

Progressivists believe that education should focus on the child rather than the

subject matter. The students' interests are important, as is integration of thinking,

feeling, and doing. Learners should be active and learn to solve problems by

experimenting and reflecting on their experience. Schools should help students

develop personal and social values so that they can become thoughtful, productive

citizens. Because society is always changing, new ideas are important to make the

future better than the past (The total scores of questions 4, 24, 26, 34, and 36 are

related to this philosophy).

Reconstructionism/Critical Theory

Social reconstructionists advocate that schools should take the lead to reconstruct

society in order to create a better world. Schools have more than a responsibility to

transmit knowledge, they have the mission to transform society as well.

Reconstructionists use critical thinking skills, inquiry, question-asking, and the

taking of action as teaching strategies. Students learn to handle controversy and to

recognize multiple perspectives (The total scores of questions 8, 11, 15, 25, and 40

are related to this philosophy).


Information Processing

For information processing theorists, the focus is on how the mind of the

individual works. The mind is considered to be analogous a computer. It uses

symbols to encode, process, remember, and retrieve information. It explains how a

given body of information is learned and suggests strategies to improve processing

and memory (The total scores of questions 6, 14, 22, 29, and 37 are related to this

philosophy).

Behaviorism

Behaviorists believe that behavior is the result of external forces that cause

humans to behave in predictable ways, rather than from free will. Observable

behavior rather than internal thought processes is the focus; learning is manifested

by a change in behavior. This is known as the stimulus-response theory of learning.

The teacher reinforces what what the student to do again and again and ignores

undesirable behaviors. The teacher's role is to develop behavioral goals and establish

reinforcers to accomplish goals (The total scores of questions 20, 30, 33, 35, and 38

are related to this philosophy).

Cognitivism/Constructivism

The learner actively constructs his or her own understandings of reality through

acting upon and reflecting on experiences in the world. When a new object, event, or

experience does not fit the learner's present knowing structures, a conflict is

provoked that requires an active quest to restore a balance. Teachers facilitate

environmental conditions and mediate experiences to support student learning (The

total scores of questions 2, 9, 19, 27 and 32 are related to this philosophy).

Humanism

Humanist educators consider learning from the perspective of the human

potential for growth, becoming the best one can be. The shift is to the study of

affective as well as cognitive dimensions of learning. Beliefs include: human beings

can control their own destiny; people are inherently good and will strive for a better

world; people are free to act but must be responsible; behavior is the consequence of

human choice; and people possess unlimited potential for growth and development.

There is a natural tendency for people to learn, which will flourish if nourishing,

encouraging environments are provided (The total scores of questions 3, 13, 18, 21

and 28 are related to this philosophy).


17

How Close Student Teachers' Educational Philosophies and Their Scientific Thinking Processes in Science Education

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